Re: [lojban] non-ka properties

[And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>]

John E Clifford, On 26/06/2011 17:14:
> {kau} began life as a meaningless marker to distinguish between two meanings of
> things like
>
> ko'a cusku le du'u ma mrogau:
> He said who the murderer was.  and
> Who did he say the murderer was?
>
> (I think they got the usage exactly backward: that the {ma} is in the
> subordinate clause is obvious; that it functions outside that clause is useful
> additional information -- and not just for questions, since we sometimes want to
> raise expressions out of subordinate clauses, but cannot in general do so).

Yes. Logically, ma is marked and makau is unmarked, i.e. ma is makau plus something extra.

> As such, it can occur just about anywhere that a proposition can occur,
> basically the array of psychological verbs (I don't think anybody thinks it just
> goes with {djuno}, though that is the stock example).  But not elsewhere, since
> its "meaning" is completely tied up with indirect questions.

Not only psych verbs. Also things like "How fat you get depends on how many cakes you eat", and even "Your zodiacal sign affects your fate" ("What your zodiacal sign is affects what your fate is") -- lots of English definite NPs logically encode what Lojban calls "indirect questions".

--And.

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